Violent scenes in Catalan referendum were not the return of Spain’s Francoist police

First paragraph: The heavy-handed police intervention against the Catalan nationalists during the unilateral referendum on October 1 produced some shocking images: police in riot gear beating unarmed protesters and seizing ballot boxes. Five days later Madrid was making conciliatory gestures, with government undersecretary for Catalonia Enric Millo apologising for the behaviour of some police officers, saying: "When I see these images, and more so when I know people have been hit, pushed and even one person hospitalised, I can’t help but regret it and apologise on behalf of the officers that intervened."  Spain is a relatively young democracy – less than 40 years old – and many still remember Spain under General Franco, who came to power through the merciless 1936-1939 civil war and ruled until his death in 1975. The association with the events of last week are unavoidable: are the Francoist police back

Las voces de la policía en la II República española

Análisis de las reformas policiales de la segunda República española y de la actitud ante ellas por parte de las revistas de la policía gubernativa

The military and the (colonial) policing of mainland Portugal (1850–1910)

First paragraph: Policing the countryside was the main task of the Portuguese army during the second half of the nineteenth century. The military also had a crucial role in the policing of the Portuguese colonies, especially after the occupation campaigns of the 1890s. In order to understand how they approached that task in the colonies, it is essential to have a clear picture of the centrality of the army as police in metropolitan Portugal. This chapter assesses the nature and extent of these policing duties from the 1850s (when the constitutional monarchy became a stable regime) to the 1920s (when the republican reforms changed the picture), underlining the links between the military policing of both European and colonial Portugal. In addition, as both the civilian and the military elite depicted the rural and illiterate populations that they policed as a savage other, this chapter also sketches the quasi–colonial appreciation of the metropolitan rural poor that guided the military’s policing actions. Michel Foucault’s insights on the continuities between colonial and internal governance led to a new approach to the history of policing during the 1980s and Mike Brogden (1987) made the case for the colonial undertones of the British new police in the nineteenth century. This chapter situates Portugal within these debates, also stressing that the military fully belong to the history of policing, both in the colonial and in the metropolitan contexts

Re-imagining Petitioning in Spain (1808-1823)

This article examines collective petitioning in metropolitan Spain during the Age of Revolution, focusing on the practices and discourses that framed petitioning as a meaningful form of action. There was a deeply rooted tradition of petitioning in old regime Spain, which was part of the ordinary bureaucratic workings of the crown and also provided a legitimizing framework for rioting in specific contexts. The collective experimentation in popular participation after the 1808 Napoleonic invasion transformed petitioning. Petitioning was first reconceptualized in accordance with the emerging language of rights and popular sovereignty. Activists and commentators had some awareness of the use of public petitioning in Britain, and once the representative Cortes met in Cadiz in 1810, public petition drives on public issues became part of the political culture. At the same time, the need to legitimate unconventional forms of action in the context of a crisis in the state converted petitioning into an all-embracing right. The right to petition, not only encompassed signed protest texts, but legitimated the old tradition of petitioning by riot and further was used to justify provincial rebellions, juntas and military pronunciamientos. In comparative terms, this article highlights the elasticity of the language of petitioning during the Age of Revolution and cautions against narrowly associating it with one particular form of collective action or historical trajectory

Civil Resistance and Democracy in the Portuguese Revolution

During the summer of 1975, a year after the Carnation Revolution, thousands of Portuguese men and women took to the streets in order to prevent what they feared could be a communist takeover. A military-led government had trumpeted the transition to socialism and the Armed Forces Movement was discussing the dissolution of the recently elected constitutional convention. This article offers a new account of the significance and political impact of the anti-communist rallies, demonstrations and riots during 1975 and provides an interpretation of the mechanisms by which anticommunist mobilisation empowered moderate leaders and reversed the balance of power within the military, playing a crucial role in the triumph of electoral democracy

El principio de autoridad y los motines antifiscales de 1862 en Portugal

Depto. de Historia, Teorías y Geografías PolíticasFac. de Ciencias Políticas y SociologíaFALSEpu

France Speaks!: Petitioning for Louis-Napoléon in 1851

In 1851 more than 1.6 million signatures endorsed petitions for an amendment to the 1848 constitution that would have allowed Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte to stand for reelection. Following contemporary critics who claimed that the movement had been orchestrated by the government, scholars have been little impressed by this mobilization, which produced the largest petition of nineteenth-century France. By analyzing the petitions and the signatures themselves, official reports, correspondence of key actors, and the public debate, this article reappraises the campaign, making three claims: that a government-sponsored petition merits analysis in the context of the explosion of popular mobilization that followed 1848, that the depiction provided by the republicans of the participation of the administration in the campaign is partial and incomplete, and that the petitioners were not dependent and manipulated individuals but purposeful citizens who understood and supported the petitions they signed. The article concludes that the campaign would not have succeeded without the genuine popularity of the president and the surfacing of a strong popular Bonapartist undercurrent

Introducción. Policía, Opacidad y Ciencias Sociales

Sin resume

Por una historia de la policía que sea útil

Hay muchas formas de escribir historia. A partir de una sucesión de ejemplos, este texto reflexiona sobre las diferentes maneras de abordar la historia de la policía y propone que la historia policial más útil para las policías contemporáneas en sociedades democráticas –y para la ciudadanía de esas mismas sociedades– es una historia trasnacional de la profesión policial que vincule a la policía con los problemas y desafíos específicos de la modernidad.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Forjadas por los adversarios. Movilización católica en la era del liberalismo (1812-1874)

En este texto se traza la historia de las recogidas de firmas impulsadas por activistas católicos españoles entre 1812 —veinte mil firmas contra la abolición de la Inquisición— y 1869 —tres millones de firmas contra la libertad de cultos—. Esta última, pese a los problemas de verosimilitud de los números, quizá fuera la mayor petición española del siglo xix y hace palidecer a cualquier otra campaña española de esa centuria. Como principales fuentes este trabajo utiliza prensa, folletos impresos, los diarios de sesiones y los fondos custodiados en el Archivo del Congreso de los Diputados y la Biblioteca Apostólica Vaticana. A diferencia de otras peticiones, las católicas se caracterizaban por aceptar la firma de mujeres y niños, lo que cortocircuitaba la viril conceptualización de la ciudadanía de los liberales. Atendiendo a estas y otras peculiaridades, en este artículo no se trata únicamente de censar las principales campañas de peticiones y exposiciones públicas, sino de desentrañar las claves culturales con las que, en diálogo con las iniciativas de los católicos de países vecinos, los activistas españoles entendieron que la recoger firmas multitudinariamente era una norma adecuada de intervención popular en la política. La principal conclusión es que el activismo católico jugó un papel protagonista en la inscripción en la cultura política española del siglo xix del movimiento social como forma peculiar de hacer política